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You’re Only As Pretty As You Feel – Caroleen Beatty

Black Beauty Records 72009

Caroleen Beatty's You’re Only As Pretty As You Feel is the latest transmission from the brilliant Bay Area collective circulating around Black Beauty Records and genius fusion collective Mushroom who — in turn — are headed by drummer Pat Thomas. Like Mushroom’s Glazed Poppems, the sprawling double-gatefold LP they released last year, Thomas receives a "Directed and Produced by…" credit. For his newest picture, though, Thomas goes the opposite direction, placing just five songs in under half an hour. The selections — numbers by the Pentangle ("Sally Go Round the Roses"), Ginger Baker ("Toady"), Jefferson Airplane ("Pretty As You Feel"), and others — continue Thomas’s mission as both loving curator and delighted mutator of the psychedelic tradition.

On the disc-closing "Toady," Brian Felix's piano skitters with dense melancholy, while Erik Pearson's flute flutters, Matt Cunitz's keyboards burble ominously, and Beatty and Alison Levy moan the refrain: "toady is horny." Like a less smarmy John Waters — or least someone who realizes that sex is often hilarious — Mushroom (whose Black Beauty imprint recently released a disc of blaxploitation porn soundtracks) juggle kitsch and sincerity. It takes very little of either to appreciate You’re Only As Pretty As You Feel, just hungry ears.